Press Release

Speeding Tickets By State: Where Are Drivers Most Likely To Be Ticketed?

July 2010

The 4th of July is one of the busiest traffic days of the year and nothing can ruin a vacation more quickly than an undeserved traffic ticket.

Information on how many traffic tickets are issued in each state is hard to come by because most localities — especially ticket-happy speed trap towns — are reluctant to publicize their ticketing prowess.

That means that getting drivers the information they need to protect themselves from unjust tickets requires a little creativity.

The National Motorists Association to the rescue?

Luckily, the National Motorists Association (www.motorists.org) — a motorists rights group that has been helping drivers fight traffic tickets for over 25 years — has come up with a way to give 4th of July travelers some insight on which states most likely to ticket drivers.

How did the NMA generate these rankings?

The rankings below were generated by analyzing ticket-related search queries such as “speeding ticket” and “traffic tickets” over time using Google’s Insights for Search — a public tool that shows search trends across the United States.

Without further ado, the rankings:

After crunching the numbers, the National Motorists Association found that the state most likely to hand out a traffic ticket is Florida, followed closely by Georgia and Nevada. The state where drivers are least likely to get a traffic ticket is Montana.

Here is the full list of states: (ranked from most likely to ticket drivers to least likely)

Obviously, these rankings aren’t perfect (search queries can be impacted by a number of different factors), but the National Motorists Association has found that the list matches up very well with their day-to-day experiences helping motorists fight traffic tickets.